Another with this best since Daydream Nation stuff. That's a hard enough thing to sort out from most people, who are variously up or down on different albums from over the years, but notice that as far as his ratings go, Christgau is more or less with me and my undying acceptance of everything. (Note, not: I am with him.) What would it mean for someone who thinks that and has rated their records as he has to say 'best since Daydream Nation'? But he's not even saying that. It's 'by most standards their best since Daydream Nation', which is even weirder. 'Most' would probably quibble endlessly about it, though there certainly were people that said things like that last year. So is it then a claim about what the best would be by the standards most people profess (implicitly or explicitly), whether they can see it or not?

Fitting that this jab at NPR and ilk - which the very astute and kind David Penner called me out for when he first read it - should be on the same page as the remark about the Youngblood Brass Band previously linked to. On the divider in the record store: 'NPR darlings'. I tried to rise above.

Hm. I finally found it. I didn't like it. I'm wary of listening to it again. I'm listening to Prince right now. Why stop listening to Prince? Ever?

I'm glad that I remembered to seek out 'I'm Like a Bird' when I got an iPod; I wouldn't have if it weren't for this. It must be one of the most sumptuously produced records of the past five years; I know that's standard for radio pop, but more than most anything current I listen to it just drips with money. It's too bad 'nattering' as a word has such poor connotations because Furtado stakes out some fucking territory which got even better (and less coherent, which I suppose is to say, and therefore less coherent) later; check out the 'Get Ur Freak On' remix on the Tomb Raider soundtrack from 2001. She kills it. And probably loosens Missy up a bit more, if you can imagine.

But I still feel like I just walked into the wrong store or something when I play 'Bird'.

The guitar solo to 'Little Red Corvette' reminds me of the solo to 'Downtown Train'.

!

Do not take the suggestion to extra-quote Serena Southerlyn (har) (I am laughing at the spelling) to imply that doing so will merely salvage something that without the quotes is irredeemable as if what the quote marks add is then what you will be enjoying. The quote marks transform everything. If one is drawn to camp when one realizes that 'sincerity' is not enough, then one does not in getting on the bus throw away the stuff of sincerity. The same point could be made more convincingly about grieving loved ones and on the stand breakdowns: if you don't cry, it isn't love? Er it isn't camp? If I were to have used a period instead of a question mark, by the way, I fear I would have blown the whole deal.

To be precise: the mistake is not to decry the robotic Röhm but to try to leave the camp to do it.

You just go ahead and get your mouse and hilight those quotes and see where the breaks between characters are.